An Honest Day's Piracy
by invisible pawprint
Summary: The things Elizabeth might have learned on the Black Pearl in PoTC. Who would be better to teach her to be a pirate captain than the original pirates themselves?


An Honest Day's Piracy

The jeering laughter of the dammed and soulless crew clattered and crashed around the tight wooden walls of the cabin until she had sobbed her throat raw with fear. The glaring moon lit a slaughterhouse of labouring revenants presided over by the ringmaster of horrors whose ruined form blocked the doorway. Elizabeth curled into herself until she was no more than a tightly wound bundle of rags in the corner and prayed for her father to come, for Will Turner, for Commodore Norrington or for oblivion. None came.

The darkness swept over her, creeping behind her eyes and filling her shattered thoughts with nightmares. Storybook monsters, old sailor's tales, her grandmother's maid's stories and the devils of hell mixed together in her mind. Not daring to scream for fear of reminding the monsters of her poor hiding place, she prayed instead with a fervour she had never before known.

When Barbossa booted open the door to his cabin, the morning light came with him. Casting a haughty gaze over her, he stumped to his table and gazed at the forgotten food. With a swing of his arm, he sent it crashing to the floor, dark wine staining Elizabeth's borrowed finery. A green apple nudged her hand. She watched from the corner of her eye as the creature spread charts in their place and bent over them and finally a flicker of hope came to her. _If he is plotting a course from Port Royal, why then we must be going to a...a place on human seas. A place where the British can follow, surely._ The black-sailed ship was not yet sailing to hell.

She raised her head but kept the weak defence of her shoulder turned towards him. "Do you...chart a course to another island, Captain?" she whispered.

He favoured her with a long look. "Aye. Even the dead like to know their heading, Miss Turner." He snipped away the distance with a pair of compasses.

"What are you planning to go do there?" Her hair clung to her sweating skin with prying fingers and she pushed it away. The monkey burst into the cabin, chittering and squeaking.

"Tis naught but what I told ye last night, if you be remembering. we have a need of that gold piece ye brought us and yer presence is...vital to our cause."

"But what am I to do until then?" she demanded. Surely the captain and crew would not let her pass another night unmolested.

"Well, seein' as ye came to my ship wearing our gold, ye might as well join the crew", he said. "Tis that or the brig", he added off-handedly.

"You mean I should _work_ out there?" she gasped.

"And here's me thinkin' that ye were a maid", he said. "Or perhaps a maid who likes to use such a lot of long words to impress us humble pirates doesn't understand. "Do you have an objection to physical exertion, Missy?"

"No! No, of course not! Do you want me to..." she cast about in her mind for the work which maids did, "...clean or stitch?"

"Aye. Ye can wash the decks and stitch the sails with me men. Tis said that its powerful bad luck to have a woman on board but it seems that we be cursed men already."

The ship creaked and swayed as the light grew stronger around them. Barbossa's smile reminded her too strongly of the skull beneath the skin.

"And am I to become a...a _plaything_ for your men to push and pull and toss and leer at? I warn you, Captain", she had her chin up now, "I warn you that I will not stand for such treatment. We have an accord."

Tossing down the sextant, Barbossa swung towards her. "Yer accord said nothing of work, Missy. Now are ye going to pull yer weight on the Pearl or are ye nought but a helpless female who might be...", he grinned, ... "locked in the brig ter await the Captain's pleasure?"

"I'll work", she snapped.

"And a fine answer that is", he returned jovially.

His sudden wild moods baffled her. No gentleman of her acquaintance grinned or mocked or swung between anger and pleasure in such a way. At least, she realised, not in her presence.

"What are ye thinking of now?" Barbossa demanded.

She set her chin, firmly. "I was wondering, Captain, if all men are pirates under their skin."

"Many men, for sure." He glanced sideways at her. "And I have more experience of what lies under men's skins than most."

She shuddered suddenly and then couldn't stop shuddering. In his human guise, with a sextant in his hand, rough seaboots and a burred west country accent, Barbossa appeared no more than a common sailor, if a clever one and a captain. No more of a threat than the nice Mr Gibbs who had taught her how to sing sailors' shanties on the long crossing from England. But Barbossa was a skeleton, presiding over a ship from hell and on this ship she was expected to stay and work and live with the soulless men.

"And what be the matter _now_?"

"How will I be safe from...from your men, Captain?"

He looked her over thoughtfully. "I'll have the first man to lay a hand on you thrown overboard."

Elizabeth gasped.

"Tis not as if it will hurt them but maybe the long walk will do them good."


End file.
